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Monday, 26 March 2012

by Teri TerryOn Saturday I went to the Oxford Literary festival with most of my crit group and a few others along as well. Friends, books, a gorgeous sunny day in Oxford, and promise of a pub after: bliss. But first and foremost, we were there to hear a stellar panel of award-winning YA authors on this topic:

Life, Death and Other Grown up Subjects.

Patrick Ness: author of the acclaimed Chaos Walking trilogy, the first of which had me glued hour after hour to the pages...then throwing it across the room at the end because book 2 wasn't out yet. He won the 2011 Carnegie medal for book 3, Monsters of Men, and also wroteA Monster Calls, completed from an idea left by the late Siobhan Dowd.

Tim Bowler: also a former Carnegie Medal winner for River Boy, and the author of Starseeker, Apocalypse, Frozen Fire, Bloodchild, Buried Thunder, the groundbreaking Blade series, and a new novel, Sea of Whispers - out in October.

Sally Nicholls: whose Ways to Live Forever won the Waterstones Children's book prize and was shortlisted for the Branford Boase. Her latest All Fall down is a historical apocalypse, set at the time of the black death.

Moira Young: whose debut Blood Red Road about survival in a lawless future won the Costa.

They got straight to the jugular:Is young adult fiction depressing?Tim: No. It is both tough and necessary to write about the complexities of life and perplexities about these issues, one of which is dealing with death. Must there be hope? The easy answer is yes. But don’t give them humbug, either (Patrick agrees, though instead of humbug calls it crap). Tim says they may be depressing, troubling things to take on, but taking them on is optimistic.Patrick: has judged teenage writing competitions, and their writing is way bleaker than anything we can come up with! If you tell the truth about what is difficult, then when you tell truth about the good stuff, like love, it is more truthful because you haven’t lied about the tough stuff.Sally: tries to write truth in a way that isn’t depressing; to write in a way that also acknowledges humour and hope. Feels it is harder to write light than dark, but it is important.Moira: kills people off without a second thought.Do they prefer to write for a teen audience?Tim: it doesn’t matter who the audience is – or their age - so long as will meet half way in the story.Sally:

'Teenagers are all about the edges of things; pushing the questions: what is the edge of what I can do? What is the edge of what I can believe?' Sally Nicholls

Sally: better to explore edges reading than doing.Patrick: philosophy of writing: ‘look what I’m getting away with!’Sally: ‘write what you can imagine’, not write what you know. Apocalypse novels are edges: what if the worst thing happens? Hope comes out of bad things.On Character, Theme and Genre:Tim: doesn’t start with themes, starts with characters. Dealing with loss is part of life. Though bleak for the sake of bleak, dark for the sake of dark, is humbug as well. Tragedies make us think and care: they feed compassion.

‘Go where the story wants to go, go where characters want to go – the characters choose the theme.' Tim Bowler

Dive into chaos!Patrick: doesn't describe his books as dystopian. But if dystopian is this - society broken down, rules gone, don’t know what you are supposed to do - this feels like being 14.

'Teenagers regard dystopia as just one step away from their own life.’ Patrick Ness

Are there any writers out there?

This is a question that Patrick asked the audience. I felt insanely nervous raising my hand, even surrounded as I was by writing friends who were all doing the same. Even sat there with a copy of soon to be published Slated stashed in my handbag that made frequent excursions out whenever I spotted someone I know (sorry about that, everyone). I still feel like I’m impersonating an author. I could barely get that hand up at all. What if Slated is the only thing I ever write that works? Does it even work at all?My quote of the night:

'Every story you write is a mountain no-one has climbed.' Tim Bowler

He said that writers are plagued by self doubt: the best writing comes from the deepest struggle. When you start writing a story, standing at the bottom and looking up: all you can think is OMG. But once you get up there… all the struggle is worthwhile.Just off to get my crampons…

Great write up of the event. It was really good talk and fab afternoon with fellow SCBWI members. Really enjoyed my first ever lit festival event, and thanks to the SCBWI Oxford folks, without you guys I'd have been roaming the streets for hours looking for the venue! :)

Oh wow! What a festival, thank you for sharing these amazing, encouraging and very sober insights into the writerly process esp geared for young adult fiction. I love the Patrick Ness quote about dystopia!

A wonderful glimpse into the minds of four great authors and what I'm sure was a terrific night. Some reassuring comments when you've written a YA fairy tale about a kleptomaniac :)Thanks for posting this Terri, you've made my day. All the best with Slated, absolutely love the cover by the way :)

Thank for doing the report, Teri. Great to hear the contrasting view from the authors too - and SO reassuring to hear that the greats feel like each novel they write is a mountain to climb! It can be a struggle, but what a great metaphor; after the struggle a fantastic feeling of achievement awaits!

Terrific quote from Tim Bowler! Wow! There's another great quote (mentioned by Geraldine McCAguhrean in The White Darkness's acknowledgements - 'A book must be an ice-axe to break the sea frozen inside us' - Kafka ... I felt like that the entire time I was writing my current novel.